Radical Habits

Sister Florence Deacon, the Rebel Nun

In April, the Vatican accused your group, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the country’s most influential nuns’ organization, of “radical feminism.” Did that surprise you? I was surprised by us being called radical feminists. I could introduce them to some real radical feminists.

Part of the criticism was that the sisters weren’t speaking against issues like abortion, contraception and gay marriage. But if you look at the Gospel, Jesus welcomed sinners with the idea that they would be drawn to change their lives. Human beings are frail. None of us always act the way we wish we would act.

Cardinal Levada, who oversaw the assessment of the L.C.W.R., has been questioned for his handling of sex-abuse cases. I’m not going there.

Do you have feelings about the sex-abuse scandal? I don’t want to go there. I’ll tell you personally, I’m appalled, but so is everyone else. We’re all appalled.

Why does the L.C.W.R. take political stances, like protesting the Bush tax cuts? The Gospel encourages Catholics to create a world in which everyone has what they need so they can live as full human beings and develop their faith. If we believe the most vulnerable need to be cared for, some of it has to rely on services provided by the government.

One theory about why the assessment came out when it did is that the sisters supported Obama’s health care plan, and the bishops were against it. The review was started before that. I’ve heard those suggestions as well, but we have no way of knowing if that’s true. It’s particularly tense right now because we have an election coming up.

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Credit
Eli Meir Kaplan for The New York Times

My 6-year-old son is obsessed with the election. Do you have advice for how to keep him from becoming . . . A political junkie? Help him volunteer at food pantries. Have him see you getting involved in direct service. Have him see you vote. Foster a moral outlook.

I noticed you have a Facebook page. Do you like Facebook? I do. Initially, I was only friending relatives. More and more people were trying to friend me, and at first I was just ignoring them all, but then I decided to go a little further. I keep in touch with a group of former students in their 40s and 50s that way.

You were a teacher too. What about the stereotype of the scary nun with a ruler? That wasn’t really part of the culture when I was a teacher. People are forgetting there was a different sense of physical discipline in the past, “If you spare the rod, you spoil the child.” We certainly see now that it’s not a way to inspire responsibility and self-confidence. In Texas, it’s still legal, and that’s in public school.

What do you say to people who complain that some charities, famously Mother Teresa’s missions, don’t actually fix the problem of poverty? There are a couple of approaches to poverty. One is what you would call charity. Mother Teresa chose to pick the babies out of the gutter, to do direct service with God’s most vulnerable. The other is called justice. It has to be both-and. It can’t be either-or.

Did you hear about the imprisonment of this feminist punk band in Russia, Pussy Riot? Yes. It seemed to me to be quite political. The women said they didn’t mean any disrespect to religion.

You entered the convent at 16, in 1961. Did you miss out on pop culture, like the Beatles? The first time I heard of the Beatles, it had snowed and someone had stamped “Beatles” in the snow. I said, “Why is someone stamping the word ‘beetles’ in the snow?” Then I found out it was this new rock band.

What was the first song of theirs you heard? I don’t remember! I did like their “Sounds of Silence.”